hey guys been missen wiht that script you lead me to heres a test of what i added on to it, this is palying in revers

let me know thanks any thoughts an ideas welcome

http://www.transonicaviation.com/3dpic/animations/house.mov

loran

03-29-2006, 03:27 PM

This the file I shared before with a vortex added...
MAybe you could built your own house model ;)

thehive

03-29-2006, 04:38 PM

this file never had a vortex that im aware of jus the birth script an the house an the plow emitter thats it im jus missing the nodes to finsh off my idea, we have a buliding that were goint to replace it with when this all done ill post the video, but the script and flie is much appriceated thanks

PsychoSilence

03-29-2006, 07:47 PM

This the file I shared before with a vortex added...
MAybe you could built your own house model ;)

is it possible to post a max 7able version of this max file? or the script and a screenshot of the particle view?

regards

psycho

loran

03-30-2006, 08:44 AM

PsychoSilence, here is a v7 version of the building
PF-building-max7.max (http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/divers/PF-building-max7.max)

Thanx to Allan Mckay's tutorial I was able to do it using afterburn.
I'm not quite satifised with my result yet. It doesn't seam to interact with the surface walls (cilinder) in a right manner. Mainly it bothers me that it tends to go over the lines.

If someone would give me some guidelines where to move on then I would be really happy to try some new methods.

ArtiZta

04-08-2006, 03:51 AM

Hi all
It's been a while since i've posted something. And every time I come back to post is a question :)
Just like now... is it possible to emit particles in a row straight from the emitter and not using spawning test? Like say 25 particles at once & next emittion another 25 particles and so on. Of course with no speed variation so the particles move together.

Oh, and how about birth rate? can I have the birthrate according the time? Like every 5th frame or something like that? do I have to use script for that or there is work around?

cheers

ps: sorry if this question has been asked before :sad:

feldy

04-08-2006, 06:23 PM

your talking about a burst of particles every 5 frames?

ArtiZta

04-09-2006, 06:45 PM

Yes, you can say it like that for the 2nd question. But the 1st question the burst i'm looking for is nicely aranged particles, like in a row, or a ring shape moving together, starting from the emitter without using spawn. Is that possible.

Werewolf006

04-17-2006, 11:06 AM

Stick 'em on an object, Animate it, then hide before rendering. (if you insist they are that rigid)

DoubleSupercool

04-18-2006, 06:57 AM

You can set the particle spawn to "rate" (as opposed to definite number) and then apply different controllers to the rate in the curves editor. So, say you wanted a random spray of sparks from an angle grinder type object, you could add a noise controller to the rate, make it always greater than zero and the curve would determine the rate at that point in time.

depleteD

04-24-2006, 05:07 AM

Shizzy, been along time. This is one of my favorite forums. Well can anyone gimme a crit on my blast map. Just a lil movie to put on a shapemark

Its not even funny how bad i will snap if i have another codec error :D

DaForce

04-27-2006, 03:12 AM

depleteD:
Man thats awesome!!

I dont suppose you would be willing to share any of that would ya.

Very impressive... looks great!!

Aldarion

04-27-2006, 05:25 AM

refresh error

Aldarion

04-27-2006, 05:28 AM

That's very impressive indeed depleteD, you sure you don't want to share ? I'm sure it would help us all ...

Werewolf006

04-27-2006, 10:27 AM

Awsome Depleted, Because it's fast, The problem you're having is not obvious.
But I think it's in the trails, isn't it?
Where the sudden blurness in the first frame or 2 of an explosion coming from?
Did you intentionally do it based on reference material? (it's a very nice touch, Although the codec may take the credit)

PsychoSilence

04-27-2006, 01:20 PM

wow that's cool psycho!
any hint on how u done that?
thanks man

thank you viztastic :) maybe i put togehter a tutorial if i can find the time on weekend.

Hey pshyco that is some cool stuff man.

Crit anyone? I'm haveing some problems with a aburn system in their. Its still a wip.

Its not even funny how bad i will snap if i have another codec error :D

really neat! how many pflow systems are in there? one for the commet, one for the explosion itself and one for the dust?

loran

04-27-2006, 01:38 PM

Wow!! DepleteD!
Awsome AB works! could you please tell us more about your settings (PF n AB)
could you render just one explosion in a non-moving shot?
I will have an big explosion to create soon and I d like to know more about yours!!
Very nice works

depleteD

04-28-2006, 04:18 AM

Ah thanks for the nice comments guys.

Well doing this scene was to serve a 2 fold purpose. My demoreel for fx and to help the community. I still need to fix a couple things, get moblur to work on the particles bled some stuff together.

Well a big thing of this look was adding a couple aburn systems on top of eachother. Have a tendril system ontop of a traditional fractal sysem. That was the main thing. Coming from a painting background I kind of took the same approach of building up my art. Gotta add lots of things to please the eye. Its gotta be chaotic. Details Details Details. ANother technique I use from painting is I used a refrence. Always use a refrence.

A bit about the scene, I have 10 initial spawns and 11 different afterburn systems. All in 1 system

I dont wanna sound like a arrogant prick and assume someone would use this for commercial use.Um please use this for educational use, please dont use this in commercial work. I dont really care if you do, but just dont. I put a fair amount of time into this.

Thanks again guys.

depleteD

04-28-2006, 04:25 AM

Where the sudden blurness in the first frame or 2 of an explosion coming from?

Thats camera shake :)

Boa

04-28-2006, 06:11 AM

I put a fair amount of time into this.

Wow! What an impressive setup! I can imagine that this wasn't done overnight. Dissecting this file will be of great value. Thanks for sharing!

Where did you get the reference from?

Andrea

loran

04-28-2006, 10:37 AM

DepleteD,thx for sharing!
amzing stuff and very confusing settings! arg! this will take time to understand the way this is done. first the huge PFlow structure and then the large amount of differents AB settings.

Sure I will learn many from this! thx again

Werewolf006

04-28-2006, 11:48 PM

Thanks For Sharing man. Very generous of you :) (I don't have AB at the time but I'm sure it will prove helpful)

Thats camera shake :)

I thought so, A nice touch. Was it done in Post?

DaForce

04-28-2006, 11:59 PM

depleteD:
Thanks so much man, will have fun picking this apart.
Single frame look sweet.. dont be so modest :D

Thanks again

depleteD

04-29-2006, 07:10 PM

Hey guys thanks alot. If you have any questions about the file please feel free to ask. I added notes every now and then and tried to keep everything named for easy navigation.

The big thing to keep in mind when doing an fx shot is think in texture. When something blows up alot of shit happens. Different sizes and types of rock kick up, trails of dust, multiple plumes, different colored smoke. For example smoke dust from the 1st layer of ground would be a different from the smoke and dust kicked up from the layers underneath.

I had a question of where I got my refrence from
http://www.killsometime.com/video/videos.asp?Page=29&Sort=Alpha
The Iraq Explosion
They ahve some excellent refrence on this site.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to renderout each particle system seperately and composite it properly. ARG! Any suggestions? Im gonna pop on over to the compositing and vfx forums and ask too.

Werewolf- Yea I did it in post.

I'm doing a couple of large fx thingys for my demoreel. Once those are done I'll upload those too.

Thanks again guys
Andrew

ArtiZta

04-29-2006, 07:18 PM

Hi all,
does anyone know a workaround for animating pflow particles following animated path without heavy update process? Spending days now working on it, and just can't manage the simple animated path with pflow following speed by icon to work smooth :(

depleteD

04-30-2006, 12:22 AM

Are you useing a cache operator?

ArtiZta

04-30-2006, 01:19 AM

either with or without using cache operator, it's still heavy.

DaForce

04-30-2006, 01:26 AM

ArtiZta:

Did you by any chance merge the scene in from another one?
Reason is that totally breaks the cache operator.. and you cant fix it without the pflow toolbox 3 ( i think) or rebuilding the file.

depleteD

04-30-2006, 04:51 PM

Hello,
Heres an updated file. Wasnt happy with the way it looked and I had some wacky light rendering issues with brazil.
In this file I tweaked aburn settings and added some more particles.

When doing particle calculations, max 7 only uses 25% of the available CPU-power. (Since I have a dual Xeon processor with hyperthreading enabled) Is there a way to use 100% of the available resources? It would realy speed up particle calculation I guess.

ArtiZta

05-02-2006, 03:33 AM

No, I didn't merge the file. Even if i just try to make simple animation, animated spline, made as a path constraint for speed by icon. Once the ther is any animation on it the particle system get really heavy :( starts updating too long, even with only 1000 particles.

When doing particle calculations, max 7 only uses 25% of the available CPU-power. (Since I have a dual Xeon processor with hyperthreading enabled) Is there a way to use 100% of the available resources? It would realy speed up particle calculation I guess.

I've been questioning that as well, also for pwrapper mesh generation is aslo taking only 50% of the processor power.

Boa

05-02-2006, 06:40 AM

I had a question of where I got my refrence from
http://www.killsometime.com/video/videos.asp?Page=29&Sort=Alpha
The Iraq Explosion
They ahve some excellent refrence on this site.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to renderout each particle system seperately and composite it properly. ARG! Any suggestions? Im gonna pop on over to the compositing and vfx forums and ask too.

Thanks for the info about the reference.

Your new version looks even better than the previous one.

Regarding your rendering/compositing question:
The most difficult thing might be the z-depth layering of the seperate flows. At least I wasn't able to get a z-depth pass of Afterburn particles with just the render element (Affect Z-Buffer was on). If there is not something simple I've overlooked you might have to fake a z-depth render with Afterburn Colors set to Emitter Distance or set an appropriate expression.
For the "pure" PFlow particles you could use different material ids and reference those in multiple Matte Render elements. This way you can get a lot of masks in one go.

Andrea

3D_me

05-04-2006, 10:30 AM

When doing particle calculations, max 7 only uses 25% of the available CPU-power. (Since I have a dual Xeon processor with hyperthreading enabled) Is there a way to use 100% of the available resources? It would realy speed up particle calculation I guess.

As a test I disabled hyperthreading when caching my particle flow and it turned out that eventough windows taskmanager is showing a 50% use of systemresources, the cache-time was exactly the same. Seems like taskmanager is showing confusing figures here. Nevertheless it's clear that max doesn't use my second processor when calculation particles... any help on that?
Second question: is there something like a disk-cache for particle flow? I know orbaz included it in its 3rd version of particle flow tools, but since I don't really need the other functions of that piece of software, I think it's quite expensive for a non-professional user.

DaForce

05-04-2006, 11:00 AM

Its quite simple.

Particles only use 1 cpu. Thats all.. no way around it ATM

So when you have hyperthreading on your dual cpu system thats a total of 4 cpu threads... 2 physical and 2 virtual (hyperthreading). SO because particles only use 1 cpu thats a quarter of the cpu threads.. therefore 25%.
Now when you turn of HT that means there is only the 2 physical cpu threads.. and therefore 50%.
Its still the same amount of processing power working on the particles :D

Its annoying but thats life.

There is cache included in pflow by default.. have a look its called "cache"
The thing they included in tool box 3 was a fix that fixed pflow systems in merged files, where the cache operator would no longer work. And the only way to fix it was to re do all particle flow stuff.

SimeX

05-04-2006, 04:33 PM

Hello,
Heres an updated file. Wasnt happy with the way it looked and I had some wacky light rendering issues with brazil.
In this file I tweaked aburn settings and added some more particles.

it's really interesting from what I have seen in the movie.
I have downloaded the file and I must say it's really interesting how you build it I've learned a few things thanks to that =] thanks!, but I have 1 question I have tried to render 1 frame but for some reason it did not show any blast or anything that looked like that.

Do you know why this is happening?
(also I get an error when I open the file at the begin saying I'm missing a few files like aburn.dll or something)

could you please help me out with that?

*edit* fixed it :)

3D_me

05-07-2006, 08:03 PM

Its quite simple.

Particles only use 1 cpu. Thats all.. no way around it ATM

So when you have hyperthreading on your dual cpu system thats a total of 4 cpu threads... 2 physical and 2 virtual (hyperthreading). SO because particles only use 1 cpu thats a quarter of the cpu threads.. therefore 25%.
Now when you turn of HT that means there is only the 2 physical cpu threads.. and therefore 50%.
Its still the same amount of processing power working on the particles :D

Its annoying but thats life.

There is cache included in pflow by default.. have a look its called "cache"
The thing they included in tool box 3 was a fix that fixed pflow systems in merged files, where the cache operator would no longer work. And the only way to fix it was to re do all particle flow stuff.

Indeed it's annoying :sad: ... I guess we'll just have to wait untill more tasks become multithreaded.
About the cache-question: I knew there was a cache-operator, but since it only stores into your RAM-memory, there's not too much to store. (2Gig for the moment in my case). Since I have a lot of free gig's left on my harddisk, it would be great to use those instead. And I thought that was a nice option Box#3 was providing. Therefore I was referring to the particel flow tools.
Thanks anyway.

BTW: Allan, why is your website offline? I'm really missing it.

depleteD

05-09-2006, 07:54 PM

Hey guys,
well I'm done this project for now.

Here is it finished, comments and crits welcome. You guys probably wont notice to much different. Just some subtle changes.

Bombing. (http://people.uleth.ca/%7Eandrew.melnychukosee/portfolio/MissleStrike%20%20.avi)
right click save as i guess.

and I updated the max file also fixed the link a couple posts back.
AFTERBURN DEMO REEL PROJECT (http://people.uleth.ca/%7Eandrew.melnychukosee/portfolio/MissleBombingDemo05AfterBurnPass01.max)

I came across this amazing application for fx that I'm gonna try out for my next project. Its called darktree. Wow. This app is freaking nutz. Go try it out at

http://www.darksim.com/

once i figure out how to get burth texture to read off the shader i am set. :D

Heres a screen of my next project for my demoreel. I want to do a screen cap of this project too. I hear camtasia is good?

Yeah mate go with camtasia, works a treat! also nice looking thingy you got there, any info on what it does?

Daniel-B

05-09-2006, 09:49 PM

That missile strike looks great. Nice job guys.

depleteD

05-10-2006, 01:22 AM

PixelMagic- Thanks man,

4th-Child- its just a start of a energy explosion. Maybe from a rift in space time.I dunno. Just my next project for fun

amckay

05-11-2006, 07:54 PM

3dme - Allanmckay.com was being hosted by hellohost.com, and they went out of business. So they still have my domain so I have to go through a lot of crap to get it back, and unfortunately I've been doing 120 hour weeks pretty much for the last 2 months, so I haven't had time to resolve the issue.

Unfortunately I litterally just got off a plane in LA where I'll be here working crazy hours until Superman Returns is finished, so again it won't be resolved for another month.

However, I have a new host - and now that I have the space and bandwidth to put up more tuts, I have DOZENS (and I know I keep saying I'll update but never do) of new tuts I'll be making.

So it sucks but I just don't have time to chase up ownership of my domain right now.

However catastrophicfx.com - my companies website, will be up very soon.

Lots of stuff will happen when I have some spare time, as I've got plenty new content and other tuts etc... ack.. I haven't slept in 3 days so I doubt any of this is making much sense :)

-Allan McKay

depleteD

05-11-2006, 09:52 PM

Ah Allan those are insane hours. Well I hope you get some sleep homes.

Umm I remember you haveing a little video of this red firey vortexy whisps particle animation. All I remeber of it was that it was red and it had lots of particles. Would it be possible for you to upload the file or some settings. It had a really unique look to it.

Thanks

amckay

05-13-2006, 01:50 AM

Yeah I probably have it somewhere, unfortunately I'm in LA right now, when I get back to my office in June I'll have a look.

I'll have some more interesting stuff than that by then. That was an old animation test of a certain hero movie I was working on a year ago :P

Daniel-B

05-13-2006, 02:37 AM

Allan, whatever happened to your second DVD that was supposed to come out?

amckay

05-18-2006, 08:06 AM

Yeah um I've approved it all, I again have no idea what's going on. I just sent them another email (@$#@)

few more weeks of work and supermans done thank god!

and.... I just got my AllanMcKay.com site back! it's not up yet however after enough battling I finally control it again. So when superman's done and i'm back at the Catastrophic office I'll start making new tuts again now I have bandwidth.

so everything has gone to hell but is starting to finally see sunlight again.
Hopefully catastrophics launch will be done soon too, everything the last year has been pretty much on hold because of how busy I've been, however I'm slowly getting my life back in order :) especially now I don't have the girlfriend from hell holding me down.

Oleg interestingly enough is working with me right now so hopefully we'll make a good team for getting these effects shots out of the way ;)

Neejoh

05-18-2006, 09:02 AM

Oh man, it seems like ages that I've been here.. How's everybody doing?

I'm starting on a little animation short for school and I'll be making a little particle system for it. The animation is a "crash dummy" that's figureskating and will crash into a commercial board, so I hope it'll be fun to work on.

I'm gonna make a little effect when the skates crash into the ice after a jump. Now I've been thinking on how I should proceed, 'cause this is what I have and I'm not particular happy about it ;)

Problem with this is the animating process. The skates will bang into the ice a bunch of times, so it'll look pretty static after 2 or 3 times. Is there a way to easily randomize this?
Besides that I'm using a deflector that goes down through the SpawnPlane, so how should I animate the next one? Pull out the deflector to the side, bring it up and right over the SpawnPlane again? Or is there a better way?
And the material, do you guys know how to make it more realistic looking? This is just a simple sphere with a white material assigned to it. I'm haven't really had my hands on the storyboard (today or tomorrow maybe) so I don't know how close the camera will be to the action. I don't think it'll have close-ups of it so I prolly could get away with this, but it never hurts to make it a bit more better looking don't you think? :P

---------------------------------

This I made a while back. I know the movement isn't that realistic and I should probably have done this with a camerashake or reactor or something instead of hand keyframing, but I'm kinda happy about the endresult.
http://www.cmd.tech.nhl.nl/users/veen413/3dsmax/LittleBull/02_fulltest.jpg (http://www.cmd.tech.nhl.nl/users/veen413/3dsmax/LittleBull/02_fulltest.avi)

visualchaosfx

05-25-2006, 05:17 AM

Yeah um I've approved it all, I again have no idea what's going on. I just sent them another email (@$#@)

few more weeks of work and supermans done thank god!

and.... I just got my AllanMcKay.com site back! it's not up yet however after enough battling I finally control it again. So when superman's done and i'm back at the Catastrophic office I'll start making new tuts again now I have bandwidth.

so everything has gone to hell but is starting to finally see sunlight again.
Hopefully catastrophics launch will be done soon too, everything the last year has been pretty much on hold because of how busy I've been, however I'm slowly getting my life back in order :) especially now I don't have the girlfriend from hell holding me down.

Oleg interestingly enough is working with me right now so hopefully we'll make a good team for getting these effects shots out of the way ;)

Oh I can't wait to see the movie. Its gonna be off the hook know what I'm sayin. And (yes I'm brown nosing) Alan is the god of particle systems!!! When he walks through these corridors, every particle pricks up its ears, the mothership!! I hear the call of the mothership!!:applause: lol

frogspasm

05-25-2006, 05:28 AM

With talk like that, Alan's going to have a hard time getting through those corridors. :)

~Mike D.

amckay

05-30-2006, 07:15 PM

hahaha
thanks guys
yeah I too will be glad to see superman out at the cinemas... for completely different reasons :) (Zzzz)

I've worked on and off on this movie for almost 2 years now so I'll be glad to see it finally out

Daniel-B

05-31-2006, 10:42 PM

What parts of the movie did you work on, Allan?

Also, any word on when your DVD will be coming out?

amckay

06-01-2006, 01:45 AM

I'll say which parts when it's out. I spent more time on set and in R&D/Pre Prod than actual production, as I quit to start catastrophic fx (my own company) in September last year (spent about 8 months on the movie previously). But I flew back into LA a few weeks ago to work on a key sequence of the movie that needed attention.

dvd very soon

JKeller1068

06-02-2006, 05:32 PM

dvd very soon

It's here (http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/index.cfm/ID/309665) people! Many thanks to Allan for the great material. I'm sure this one will live up to the rest!

PsychoSilence

06-02-2006, 05:46 PM

ordering it right away :) !

no joke!

feldy

06-02-2006, 07:41 PM

im gunna order it when i get off work but it says download only huh wow i hope there on a fast connections for a 2 or 4 gig dvd worth of stuff but in the course outline there was nothing for glue 3d in it i though allan was dong stuff in the dvd with glue like the lava thing? ne ways about dam time.....

JKeller1068

06-02-2006, 07:52 PM

im gunna order it when i get off work but it says download only huh wow i hope there on a fast connections for a 2 or 4 gig dvd worth of stuff but in the course outline there was nothing for glue 3d in it i though allan was dong stuff in the dvd with glue like the lava thing? ne ways about dam time.....

My fault on that one. The post should be fixed now. The download is just a text saying that your item will be shipped:

"This is just a placeholder for the product. Your order will be shipped to you as a physical product.

Sincerely,

The Turbo Squid Team
"The World in 3D""

amckay

06-03-2006, 12:12 AM

Hi guys, new DVD finally out (@#$#@) it's taken forever, but I'm sure you guys will be happy with the content. the screenshots on the site weren't chosen that well, but basically this covers a lot of scripting and advanced techniques, cool scripted crowds, advanced events and complicated scenarios. Cool shaders, compositing etc. Plenty o stuff.

I can't remember how many nights I stayed on ICQ and kept on asking you about icebergs Allan ! So what does this DVD contain about them ??? Cheers, Mario.

amckay

06-03-2006, 11:32 AM

oh sorry, the iceberg one is interesting. It handles creating birth scripts to fracture objects and then have them animate via helpers to shift between events, so we can have an iceberg fall apart - then have its particle edges collide with other objects and intereact to create iceberg pieces falling into the water and creating realistic mesh distorted ripples into the water as the pieces fall in. Amongst other things. It's a pretty tricky and interesting one aimed to open up your mind as to ways to intergrate your particles into other more complicated scenarios.

-AM

visualchaosfx

06-03-2006, 01:48 PM

No Blade ashing in these DVDS...... ?...... *sniffle sniffle*:sad:

Steve Green

06-03-2006, 02:11 PM

Maybe Alan's waiting for Blu-Ray for that one...

- Steve

Hook

06-03-2006, 02:31 PM

Hmmmm hope someone can help me here

i have this "ring of fire" where the fire starts in the one end and moving on a path to where i whant the fire to end

i used a position object operater set to grayscale so i could controle the fires path, but some of the particles starts to grow where i only whant them to start in the end of the animation.

and yes i have chect "Delete particle if location is invalid"

take a look at the files, the particle in the rigth side should not be there befor the end of the animation

ArtiZta

06-04-2006, 06:02 AM

Finally it's out..!! :applause:
should place an order before they run out :)
hope the casing doesn't break this time.

cheers.

amckay

06-04-2006, 06:27 AM

more freebie tuts to come now I have propper hosting.

hey, so when you guys see superman, keep your eyes out for a max teapot hidden somewhere in it ;) I was bored haha

Hook

06-04-2006, 06:51 AM

hey, so when you guys see superman, keep your eyes out for a max teapot hidden somewhere in it ;) I was bored haha

ROFLMAO:applause:

feldy

06-04-2006, 07:36 PM

thats sweet its like a sublimal message im surprised your useing max on it and not maya. how did u manage that one also did ever get a release to show what u had been doing with flood?

PexElroy

06-04-2006, 09:05 PM

Good show all. And yeah, when I was reading my eMail and saw the Turbosquid newsletter and then Allan's latest visual effects DVD. I made sure it was securely on its way after that. Bravo Allan.

amckay

06-04-2006, 10:01 PM

cheers guys its taken ages to get done thanks for hurricane katrina etc. but I'm confident it will be worth it. When I get back to my office in a few weeks I plan to start building some more tuts for my website and hopefully a few other tricks up my sleeve ;)

eitherway it's my first day off in 2+ months, so I better throw my laptop out the window ;)

visualchaosfx

06-05-2006, 12:37 AM

so I better throw my laptop out the window ;)

no no no no...... if your gonna throw your laptop, throw it to me! I need a laptop anyways. Just make sure all of the max scene files are on there so I can study and study and study and study and study and study and study and study and study and study until my brain melts and can't study no more. lol

ArtiZta

06-05-2006, 04:23 AM

a teapot! :) that's sweet hahahaha...
will look for it, hope they don't cut it out.

ArtiZta

06-05-2006, 04:29 AM

a teapot! :) that's sweet hahahaha...
will look for it, hope they don't cut it out.

Does anyone know why I cannot pick Mesher as my UDeflector target? I created the mesher object from PF Source 01 (it is about 100 instanced objects). Is there some limitations for face count or something in mesher or udeflector?

--tuomas

charleyc

06-05-2006, 03:33 PM

Does anyone know why I cannot pick Mesher as my UDeflector target? I created the mesher object from PF Source 01 (it is about 100 instanced objects). Is there some limitations for face count or something in mesher or udeflector?

If you create two flows, and use one flow as the Mesher (*setting it to only use the Events from the first flow*) you can do this. However, this works best if you have PFBox#1 as even a semi-complex flow can get disorded by Mesher every time you close and open the file. As you can imagine, this can wreak havon on a net rendered animation. Having the Cleanup utilities in Box#1 in conjunction to the pre-render script tool in R8 makes life a lot sweeter when dealing with this kind of stuff.

Neejoh

06-05-2006, 09:14 PM

So D(VD)day is finally here huh Allan? I'll be ordering my copy in a few!

Hmmmm hope someone can help me here

i have this "ring of fire" where the fire starts in the one end and moving on a path to where i whant the fire to end

i used a position object operater set to grayscale so i could controle the fires path, but some of the particles starts to grow where i only whant them to start in the end of the animation.

and yes i have chect "Delete particle if location is invalid"

take a look at the files, the particle in the rigth side should not be there befor the end of the animationWell, it can be done another way.
Make a spline that's half a circle. At the beginning create a plane where you will spawn your particles of. Select the spawnplane and goto: |Animation| > position controllers > path constraint. Select the line and your plane will move from beginning 'till end in 100frames (by default).
This way you can easily spawn particles and you can leave your flow just about how you have it right now :)

[edit]
Or just link up your "PF Source 01" to this spline. The downside on this is that you can't have variation in the birth of the particles. I guess it would look cool if you add a couple of segments to the plane and put a noise modifier on it. This way the particles won't be spawned exactly straight up, but with a little variation to it. Could have a cool effect.

amckay

06-06-2006, 11:23 AM

tuomas, you and the rest of the world I'll reply or send emails to when I get back to aus ;) I'm going to try and get back on track with keeping in touch with people now supermans finally done so I have no excuse.

sorry we didn't get to catch up during e3, really bad timing that week, I had two projects going on and had flown over late in the week.

I believe meshers can be used as udeflectors, maybe not if it's vertices are changing constantly, however I believe i've done it before.

what I really recommend is writing a script to bake the mesher object out as a real mesh, or else point cached (that DOES need to keep the same vertex count, ie. emit all at once on one frame) as this avoids any dependency loop.

hope that made sense, it's 5am and I've had like 30 coronas ;)

happychopper

06-06-2006, 07:02 PM

Guys and gals, I think this has been said before but... ain't it a good idea to close this particualar thread - there's a ton of superbly useful information hidden in it and adding any more to it is only going to make it even trickier and frustrating to navigate through the 200+ pages

:-)

DeKo-LT

06-06-2006, 07:18 PM

usefull information... maybe ;)
but its very good place to talk with particle gurus :applause:

happychopper

06-06-2006, 07:28 PM

Absolutely, it's just a shame all this damned useful discussion is lost deep within it's depths.

ArtiZta

06-06-2006, 09:17 PM

I think it shold be left open no matter how thick it is.
I find this thread really friendly, meaning people are helping & getting to know each other better not just as forum posts but one day maybe might catch up for a beer and enjoying particles around them :)

Anyway, i'm working on a project where I have to make a misty sand smoke type of effect. Reference given a clip of a xman. As you can see in the zip file or an still image. Does anyone know if that's possible to do with pflow? Can anyone please advice on a technique? Because I will need it to move around in 3D space, surround a moving obeject actualy.

cheers

feldy

06-07-2006, 03:03 AM

yes...............

tuomasj

06-08-2006, 10:49 AM

allan, I think I need to write a script for it. I'll let this thread know when I get it done. :)

Yeah, too bad we didn't had chance to catch up at E3. That place was a madhouse. :)

Hi loran. Very nice flames. Anyway, in the sample picture you see that somkey/glowing effect which is reaching the flame ball. Looks like a normal effect from AE or such. That's what I have to make. But note that glow effect moves in cigarette smoke motion. Next, this effect will be moving in 3D space around the object so i though it's better to do it with pflow.

Another problem is, which I haven't solved from my previous projects, when pflow is using "speed by icon" which is linked or assignet to follow an animated path, it holds the system baaad and updates pflow really hard. Is there any workaroud for this?

emora

06-13-2006, 03:02 AM

Hello alll, what loong masive thread.. full of info.. thanks all..
I was hoping someone can point me in the right direction or give some advice with a small project.
I have an emiter with shape instance afected by 2 forces: wind with lots of turbulance and a vortex.. this is to simulate flying insects around a subject or filling a space..I like the speed, motion, quantity and gral look of it but one very important thing is missing! I need that each flying insect is pointing with its head forward.. not flying backwards, or sideways.. rotation/speed space follow is not helping me because thay are flying in all directions.. how can this be set up?
or am I missing something..? thay are born, correctly afected by the force , that sends them in all directions , but I need them pointing the right way..

Thank you for any info..

Esteban

charleyc

06-13-2006, 03:15 AM

You should have all the control you should desire within the rotation op

Speed Space sets them in the direction they were initially emitted (use the XYZ parameters to rectify alignment issues)

Speed Space Follow rotates them continuously in the direction of travel.

Aside from that is there something that you need that you are not getting?

emora

06-13-2006, 04:14 AM

thanks for the fast reply..

well i have rotation op. there, but still after the bugs get afected by the turbulance/wind looks like they dont change "heading" correctly..lets see...if I understand correctly I need and initial speed follow to "set" the correct direction and then another rotate op with speed space follow to "adjust heading" or direction depending of the angle they or direction thay take after being afected by the wind?..

I'll keep trying...
Thankyou

Esteban

charleyc

06-13-2006, 06:09 AM

You only need a single Rotation Op set to Speed Space Follow to get them to point in the direction of travel.

If they are travelling and rotating, but they do not face the direction you want (like they are moving sideways or backwards, use the XYZ parameters to correct this)

amckay

06-13-2006, 11:08 PM

Loran great work! How are things by the way?

I'm back from the wrap party, warner bros and frantic got together and went down to Vegas for 3 days to vent after spending so long on the show we may as well spend some time boozed up and broke from gambling.

I brought one of my ex blur buddies with me, I think my highlight was going to the gun range on Tropicana ave and firing machineguns for half a day despite all the other fun events and massive hangovers endured throughout the rest of it. haha now I've done it all ;) I'll have to put up some photos sometime of Leandro, Carlos and I looking very serious with our m16's, uzi's and tommy guns ;)

I'm now going to take my sunburnt ass back to Australia in a couple of hours for 2 weeks off before supervising a gig down in Sydney. If anyone's been emailing me, I have 3 months of stuff I have to catch up on, so rest assured a majority of my email I'll finally get back onto once I'm back in my office next week.

Good news is I'll be taking 2 weeks off and I've already been scribbling r&d notes down like crazy for a lot of new stuff I plan to do, amongst that will be a lot of cool new tuts. Essentially since superman began January of last year when I moved back to Aus to help set up Frantic Film's Sydney office, I've been flat out. So after the last year and a half of e3/catastrophic/superman and all other crap between I'll finally be getting back on track with everything now.

So another 2 weeks until Superman's released! I'm grabbing all of my passes as quicktimes before I fly out tonight, so hopefully I can maybe put together a behind the scenes piece on at least a few of the things I did on it once it's all done. Unfortunately there was a lot of really really cool stuff that didn't make it into the show as shots got changed or taken out etc. However all in all it's going to be an awesome film!

Neejoh

06-14-2006, 05:39 PM

Haha, you should start making some podcasts Allan :P And are you serious about the behind the scene stuff? That would be awesome, I really digg behind the scenes and even more when it's about stuff like CG.

Have you guys seen the Hyundai commercial for the World Cup 2006? Even though it's sooo obviously done with PFlow I really like it, the idea is simple but gets the job done :)

Steve Green

06-14-2006, 05:55 PM

That sounds really cool Alan - I've always wanted the DVD extra features to go in a bit more depth (obviously it's a very niche interest though).

I think the first DVD I bought was Contact, which had a nice little featurette on the comping passes for a few shots.

after a fairly long time i was able to put some new reseach&development stuff together for you + my server is back up. same problem as allan had...provider died :(

for some of the stuff the particle flow tool box #1 and/or pointcache2 (downloadable for free) are essential to succeed.

At the end of it all this all isn´t that funky sh*t and all the scenes are stripped due to the fact that i put them together for real live projects (copyright and clients shit U know...not my fault) but i thought of sharing them anyways ;)

Description:
This was originally made for an architectural visualisation. The task was to animate cars to enlive the city. Because it was a satelite view shot through the clouds i used very low poly cars...This is the mosted stripped scene. In the film the cars even stop at stop signs and have alot more variation in shading and shape of cause but i guess you get a clue on how to control traffic with PFlow ;)

Description:
I used PFlow and once again a Mesher Compound Object to use it as a deformer for an other Mesh. This is an attempt to generate such effects like footprints in mud or a plane crashing into the ground or the sea leaving a deep aisle behind......imagine your own field of application for that one ;-p

Description:
Second dramaticly stripped one...actually completly rebuilt for you.
PFlow was used to fill a stadium with spectators (rigged, pointcached mo-caped BIPEDs!) to enlive a stadium scene. Same goes here: Originally there were alot more shapes and shaders of cause ;)
New in the rebuilt version: The spectators even react on the star in the middle of the arena (he can be animated and moved, the looking direction of the spectators will follow him).

Description:
I used the PointCache2 to achieve a ghosting effect for the avatar. No PFlow here exeptional ;) Those animated avatars can be used as animated shape instances...played around with that but only for gambling....create your own army and let me see your results :D

So far...
Cheers PFlow homies!

Greets from germany

Hope you like the stuff. Email me or send a PM if anything isn´t working or unclear to you.

Very nice work PsychoSilence! Thank you greatly for sharing. The traffic scene gave me some great ideas. Thanks again!

J

PsychoSilence

06-16-2006, 01:56 PM

Yeah! that´s what these files were supposed to ;) to piont out new ideas and directions on how to use pflow in production for effects where you normally don´t think of pflwo at first ;)

hope that makes sense...still wasted from boozing :D 9am i was at home 1pm i was in my office ;)

cheers

Anselm

EDIT:
I have to thank Oleg over there at orbaz.com for uploading the files to his server as well just in case my webspace dies again! Much apprechiate that :)

Here´s the link to the same post of mine at orbaz.com with the alternative download mirror:

http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=626

EDIT #2:

Just arrived
http://www.digitaltutors.com/store/product.php?productid=28

plus allans new dvd wich i haven´t had the chance jet to have a look at...have it since release day ;-p

this is going to be a very scientific weekend ;)

PexElroy

06-16-2006, 03:31 PM

The people at Turbosquid Support are very strange, if you can even get a hold of them. I ordered Allan's second effects DVD on June 2 and it was not sent via UPS or DHL properly. In fact, the order form online never asked me what shipping I wanted :scream: When it did finally arrive late, the US Postal package was ripped open and the DVD and case were crushed and shattered.

PsychoSilence

06-16-2006, 03:42 PM

The people at Turbosquid Support are very strange, if you can even get a hold of them. I ordered Allan's second effects DVD on June 2 and it was not sent via UPS or DHL properly. In fact, the order form online never asked me what shipping I wanted :scream: When it did finally arrive late, the package was ripped open and the DVD and case were crushed and shattered. Go with another distributor maybe Allan.

That´s a hard one!

My copy was okay and delivered straight ahead (within 3 days or so from them to germany...)

I would suggest to complain at their help desk...or better aks for indemnity for damage...get both allan dvds as a package :D[/url][url="http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=/gQPU.&search=damages"] (http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=/gQPU.&search=damages)

PexElroy

06-16-2006, 03:54 PM

All good, nothing to worry about, it'll get replaced. :)

Steve Green

06-16-2006, 04:06 PM

I have to say, I've not had any problems with them.

Once I e-mailed them about the DVD not being downloadable, it arrived via DHL very quickly.

This is a lot like a spot I'm working on now for a television commercial.

I'm not a particle guy, but for this I must learn quickly. How did you create the Mesher object with all the faces as different elements? Is there a script that will do this?

Neejoh

06-18-2006, 01:34 PM

@PsychoSilence: That's freakin' awesome mate!

I think it is this on he refers to

http://worldwide.hyundai-motor.com/common/html/plaza/ads/tv_commercials/tv_corporate_19.html# Yep, that's the one. Couldn't find it when I was posting (had to catch a train, a-g-a-i-n), so thanks for completing the job haha.

PsychoSilence

06-19-2006, 08:21 AM

Invented that during a break...took me like 2 minutes to build up...so nothing really funky at all ;)

on Proceed pCont do
(
pCount=pCont.NumParticles()
count=amin #(pCount,Lampen.count)
for i in 1 to count do
(
pCont.particleIndex = i
Lampen[i].transform=pCont.ParticleTM

)
)

on Release pCont do
(

)

After you brought every particle/light into the desired position by scrubbing the timeline you can turn off the PF Source to save some time because MAX wouldn´t try to update PFlow anymore after every operation.

have fun ;)

Anselm

PexElroy

06-19-2006, 10:28 PM

I've tried your cool script Psycho, for your PF fake GI, but I can't get the flow to update the position of the lights for a new particle position seed; the particles update but the lights do not move from the original layout. And if I look inside your script op and close it, it tells me there are script errors. Great tool!

PsychoSilence

06-20-2006, 08:13 AM

I've tried your cool script Psycho, for your PF fake GI, but I can't get the flow to update the position of the lights for a new particle position seed; the particles update but the lights do not move from the original layout. And if I look inside your script op and close it, it tells me there are script errors. Great tool!

I´m so sorry, i made a slight mistake in the script :( i updated the max file and now it should work fine.

on Proceed pCont do
(
pCount=pCont.NumParticles()
count=amin #(pCount,Lampen.count)
for i in 1 to count do
(
pCont.particleIndex = i
Lampen[i].transform=pCont.ParticleTM

)
)

on Release pCont do
(

)

EDIT: Lampen is the german plural for lamp ;)

PexElroy

06-23-2006, 01:07 AM

Is the only current method to get PFlow particles to render as dots, with the scripted Vexter Renderer? PFlow can display particles as dots, but cannot render them as dots it seems. Even if PFlow uses a shape op at a very small size, doesn’t it have to consider the triangular faces for each and every shape particle?

Psycho - thanks for the fix.

charleyc

06-23-2006, 03:05 AM

Even if PFlow uses a shape op at a very small size, doesn’t it have to consider the triangular faces for each and every shape particle?

Yes. However, even if you have only a single face per particle, you will find that max will run out of memory from PFlow before it runs out of memory from the number of faces. Each particle needs a certain amount of memory for its oreientation, speed and shape data. So rendering 2 million particles with PFlow is a lot harder than rendering 2 million faces in max. From what I understand, PF Tools Box3 has made some substantial steps in this area and is now able to render millions now.

PsychoSilence

06-23-2006, 08:11 AM

This is a lot like a spot I'm working on now for a television commercial.

I'm not a particle guy, but for this I must learn quickly. How did you create the Mesher object with all the faces as different elements? Is there a script that will do this?

Hy mustan9,

i used a script by angstraum.at for deconstructing the plane into it´s faces. visit www.angstraum.at for free download of the script ;)

cheers and regards

anselm

OlegB

06-26-2006, 11:21 AM

Yes. However, even if you have only a single face per particle, you will find that max will run out of memory from PFlow before it runs out of memory from the number of faces.

It all depends on your particular situation. Just for experiment sake, I created a simple PFlow system with 4 million particles, each represented as a triangle. I used Shape Facing operator and Shape Plus (from Box#1) with a triangle shape to clobber the shape from Shape Facing. As a result, I got 4 million particles-triangles oriented at camera.
Rendering a frame with all particles (with scanline) gave me the following numbers:

Memory to hold PFlow system - 361 MB, or 95 bytes per particle
Memory for hold the meshes for rendering - 719 MB, or 188 bytes per face.

Keep in mind that in this situation each face has to have 3 vertices - there are 12 million unique vertices for 4 million faces. For regular models, you usually have half the amount of vertices as the amount of faces, so for 2 million faces you got 1 million of vertices. So, I did another experiment - rendering 8 teapots with maximum segmentation (64 segments) that gave me slightly above 2 million faces and 1 million vertices. The render required 245 MB, or 122 bytes per face which is still higher than a particle memory footprint.

That was a very simple PFlow system; and we usually have more complex setups; and a particle memory footprint is usually higher.

Thanks,
Oleg B.

PexElroy

06-26-2006, 11:34 PM

Great insight on PFlow memory use. This helps in how PFlow works with many particles, different flows, faces, and memory footprints. Thank you charleyc and OlegB :)

OlegBF

06-27-2006, 06:45 PM

20+ million particles with PFTools:Box#3 and scanline renderer - for details and animation go here: http://www.orbaz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21

http://www.orbaz.com/forumData/images/20060626/NeonVapor0261.png

Thanks,
Oleg B.

woodfoot

06-28-2006, 11:43 PM

I know this is possible, but I lack the know how to get it going. I want to make a pflow spray particles onto a mesh and stick there, like paint. If possible I would like to let the particles still be part of the particle system so they can 'drip' off the mesh, although this is probably overkill. The mesh is a character mesh (on a biped), applied with skin. I'm using Blobmesh particles to make the particles like liquid foam. I've managed to get particles to collide and stop, and to some extent follow the mesh using some of the methods described (much) earlier in this thread, but I can't get it quite right.

More simply, I want the functionality of a position operator set to lock on target, without the random dispersment of the particles when the operator is set. I want the particles to stick to the character mesh where they hit and follow the mesh around when the character moves.

Any help or a point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

-Nick

OlegB

06-29-2006, 12:25 AM

You need the Lock/Bond operator from PFTools:Box#1. It has the "drip" ability too.

Thanks,
Oleg B.

charleyc

06-29-2006, 12:29 AM

This is precisly what the Lock/Bond operator is for with PF Tools box1 (www.orbaz.com (http://www.orbaz.com/))

Aside from that you can do a lot with shape marks and script operators (replacing the shapemark shape with your particle), but you cannot get close to achieving the ease that the Lock/Bond will do for you.

Edit...doh, beat me to it Oleg :)

OlegB

06-29-2006, 12:47 AM

Yep, I'm fast with the draw :)

But you typed more :)

Oleg B.

Nazgul

06-29-2006, 02:46 PM

Thinking Particles 2.5 is out now.

http://cebas.com/news/read.php?UD=10-7888-33-788&NID=126

I'm curious what are the main difference between Particle Flow and TP 2.5?
Seems like Blur is evangelizing TP.
Why would one prefer to use TP over ParticleFlow?
Anyone knows?
cheers,
NAZ

feldy

06-29-2006, 05:06 PM

hmm thats the first i heard of them useing it i really only ever knew of one studio real useing it and that was digtal dimension.... i dont know maybe allan has some info i dont.

superhypersam

06-29-2006, 05:58 PM

Blur uses pflow (with box set 1 an 3) and Tp 2.0 pretty much equally,
each tool has its uses, TP's inter particle collision makes it the choice for fragmentation
jobs, while pflows intuitive work flow and customizable tools (box 3) make it the choice for
repeatable systems.

If you intend to have a career in the FX industry I would recommend learning both, once u have a handle on one its pretty easy to pick up on the other.

If i had to choose I would pick Pflow, but only because I enjoy the work flow and it comes with Max. Tp has a high price tag, but then again u need at lease box1 to use pflow in a production setting.

Both great tools, support them both, only makes our life easier.
__________________

Daniel-B

06-30-2006, 09:14 PM

How would you guys do a shot of a guy punching a mirror and then having it shatter? How do I fracture it, and simulate it properly?

superhypersam

06-30-2006, 10:53 PM

For that particular scenario I would recommend using reactor.
manually cut up the mirror, and then run a reactor sim on it, then use those pieces to emit the smaller shards using pflow or thinking. Any automated method of fracture never looks as good as manually creating your shards.

you could use the reactor fragment method on the small shards when they hit the floor to break em apart. Or...

well thier is many ways u could go on from thier, it really depends on the shot, how close u are, what kind of details are visible.
U may even just want to use parray for the fragmenting shards.

hope that s a help

Steve Green

07-01-2006, 09:32 AM

What Sam said :)

You can create a reactor fracture collection which would be a flat box chopped up into shards. (pro cutter in Max 8 subscription is good for this on thicker objects)

For a thinner object like a mirror you can create a bunch of 2D shapes, snapped with the verts snapped together and extrude them. Probably go for a spider web look based on the centre of the impact.

Or start with a plane and cut shards, use shapemerge with circle splines etc. and then break up the resulting faces into objects, and add a shell modifier.

The disadvantage with this method is that it's not particularly automated - there are some scripted solutions on scriptspot.com, but manually doing it gives a better result IMHO.

Once you have your fracture collection, use a non-rendering sphere to act as a collision object to punch into the collection and it should break apart. You could then use Parray or PFlow to generate tiny bits of mirror when it breaks up, where collision doesn't need to be so accurate.

Cheers

Steve

amckay

07-03-2006, 06:15 AM

http://www.allanmckay.com/CGFoam.mov

render pass from superman. there's one pass in there of soft steam created by james coulter, rest of it is mine. Chris Harvey was the sup on the job. Lots of pflow particles ;)

There's also other particle passes I did in the shot of waves splashing against the boats etc. that aren't included in this video.

feldy

07-03-2006, 07:44 AM

sweet just got the new dvd in the other day took 3 freakin weeks :( can u say what shots u did now that the movie is out

loran

07-03-2006, 08:07 AM

NIce sample Alan. It s great to be able to watch this here!This is a cool exclisivity.
Foam is a big challenge to create out of fluid simulation system. I want to create realistic boat splashes foam from a long time. I d like to see yours!

Steve Green

07-03-2006, 10:17 AM

Looks sweet, Allan.

what kind of shapes do you find work best for foam? Do you go for just points, or textured sprites, or actual geometry to get some shading?

Cheers

Steve

amckay

07-03-2006, 12:07 PM

thanks guys. Loran, I'll put up a flow or scene soon. I did waste a day originally making an automated system which was nearly finished that did it all like that. And then I figured I'll just do it by hand in the end. That was actually just for the boat splashes which aren't in that render.

That's all pflow with a point renderer. Personally little cubes/tetras with a bit of motion blur works just as well, and maybe an afterburn pass too. I did a quick example on the new dvd (AVFX2) but maybe I should do a more in depth one!
I'm going to be putting up some new freebie tuts soon (hah been saying it for years, but finally getting my crap together now supermans done).

shots that I did - I spent 8 months on set for the film (myself and Chris Harvey) at Fox Studios in Sydney. Essentially working as a liaison for Frantic and working in R&D/pre production for the film. After which I went on to Canada to continue working from the head office doing R&D for the krpytonite, the spore and for all the silt on the ocean bed, as the krpytonite expands and rips the ground apart underwater in all of those shots. I also did the initial R&D for the missile shooting off with the krpyonite and then splashing into the water. Originally that was to be seen through binoculars and so the splash was HUUGE although then it went to the boats perspective which is much more tiny. Plus all the CG clouds, missile trails etc. There was also a lot of R&D done for space stuff which didn't make it into the film. The sequences are actually COMPLETE - however being held off until the imax release at xmas.
All of this was pre prod/R&D so none of that stuff in the movie was my work, as I left to start catastrophicFX - and that was just as all of the plates were actually coming in and actual post production started!

I did return 8 weeks ago to Los Angeles to start work on the opening sequence to the film, where the sun implodes/super nova and explodes destroyign krpyton. I worked alongside a bunch of other guys including Oleg B. to get that shot happening, lot of modeling and lighting work done by Alex Scolay and Nathan Mitchel (both Aussies) on the initial Krpyton planet amongst other talented crew, and Oleg and I handled the destruction of it (Oleg the initial shockwave, and then I did all the blue core of the explosion as well as krpyton and all of the chunks etc. I also worked on the ocean waves splashing shots, as well as the one of the bouey that superman fly's past with a little splash. And .. I dunno some other stuff.

Glad the movies done. Major props go to all the frantic crew, I'm nothing compared to those guys. Chris Harvey, Jeremy Butell (sp?), Chris Pember, Oleg B, Marcus Steeds, Mark Wiebe, Chris Bond, Alex Scolay, Nathan Mitchel, J.... I should just put a link to imdb hah. but anyway everyone did a f' awesome job, I'm just glad I got to see it from start all the way through! (with small gaps here and there!).

I'll do a break down of my work on it sometime, I have got a lot of the scenes and behind the scenes renders so I may as well put em to use!

-AM

Steve Green

07-03-2006, 12:13 PM

Hi Allan,

cool - I read that the cinefex article which mentioned that there was a deleted opening scene on Krypton (what's left of it), I'd guessed it would probably end up on the DVD release, but if it's going in the IMAX release, all the better.

Cheers

Steve

OlegB

07-03-2006, 02:23 PM

The IMAX release does have the opening Krypton-destruction scene. I just went there yesterday to check it out - it's there. The IMAX release has 4 scenes shown in 3D, everything else is in 2D. There is a small "glasses" sign flashing on the bottom of the screen to indicate if the next scene will be in 3D, so you put on the 3D glasses to see it in full volume.

Glad to see Particle Flow (and Box#1 and Box#3) were used in the production.

Thanks,
Oleg B.

Laserschwert

07-03-2006, 05:46 PM

The IMAX release has 4 scenes shown in 3D, everything else is in 2D. There is a small "glasses" sign flashing on the bottom of the screen to indicate if the next scene will be in 3D, so you put on the 3D glasses to see it in full volume.

Regarding that (and going a little off topic from ParticleFlow), were those scenes shot/rendered in actual 3D (one perspective for each eye), or is it using InThrees technique to turn 2D-shot sequences into 3D? If the latter one applies, how does it actually hold up? Ever since "Star Wars" was announced to be turned into 3D, I was very skeptic as how movies would look with this...

I have seen some 3D-movies in IMAX, but those were of course all shot with a stereoscopic camera (or rendered that way), so that's pretty much comprehensible.

But regarding InThree... I mean, I understand the use of depth maps and background reconstrucion to create the image for the second eye. But what about scenes with stuff like water in it? To make water appear 3-dimensional, you have to have different reflections for each eye, but extracting a shifted perspective for the reflection the other eye sees in the water (especially if it's rough or splashing)... that's pretty much impossible, isn't it? Or effects like dust, fog, particles... those aren't just extractable by defining different "depths" for different parts of the image, as fog and dust are volumetric, with infinite layers of depth, not to mention occluded "particles", which just can't be "guessed" to be there, like it works with pattern recognition or motion compensation to reconstruct a relatively simple background.

OlegB

07-03-2006, 06:02 PM

My guess it's a stereoscopic camera. One of the shots was the run in the corn field; and it would be extremely difficult to reconstruct 3d from 2d shots. Some of the 3d scenes were with a definite addition of CG elements (not by the look of it but by a logical conclusion), so I wonder if the guys who did it, can clear it out - were you given stereoscopic images to work with it?

Thanks,
Oleg B.

Edit: Thinking more about it; the whole corn field can be a CG element. Hmm... Now it's so hard to tell what is real :)

Laserschwert

07-03-2006, 06:09 PM

My guess it's a stereoscopic camera. One of the shots was the run in the corn field; and it would be extremely difficult to reconstruct 3d from 2d shots. Some of the 3d scenes were with a definite addition of CG elements (not by the look of it but by a logical conclusion), so I wonder if the guys who did it, can clear it out - were you given stereoscopic images to work with it?

Thanks,
Oleg B.

Edit: Thinking more about it; the whole corn field can be a CG element. Hmm... Now it's so hard to tell what is real :)

So, still no answer to the mysteries of InThree ;) I guess they won't replace every element which is difficult to extract by a completely remade CG-version. But judging by this, they are probably not involved in Superman after all.

Neejoh

07-03-2006, 07:06 PM

So what was the best part to work on Allan? And what's the most important thing you learned during the making of SR?
And is the max teapot in the final cut?
Edit: Thinking more about it; the whole corn field can be a CG element. Hmm... Now it's so hard to tell what is real :)Starting to get freaky, doesn't it ;)
It's a pretty damn shame that the movie's gonna premiere at aug 3rd here in the Netherlands http://forums.cgsociety.org/images/icons/icon14.gif I'm ALLLLL in for world dominati.... I mean, worldwide releases of movies. It's gonna be a month until I've seen this little baby.

amckay

07-04-2006, 03:59 AM

a majority of the 3D/3D is all 2D. There's a few companies out there that basically roto the elements and split them apart. It's not as great as rendering two cameras, however it's cheaper and sometimes necessary. From what I understand that's what's happened with superman returns, at least from what I was told.

no real learning experiences on the project. It was great working with Oleg, caching particles is at least something I'll be doing a lot more of now :) but I can't really think of much i learnt from superman unfortunately haha as sad as it sounds. I did develop a few cool ways to do those white caps etc. but all in all it was just a lot of work for me. A lot of the tech guys there were doing crazy shit on it, I was working in that area for a while but they know flood like the back of their hands so were a lot more successful than I was in a lot of ways.

It was a great experience - and now I'm on to all the next big things

feldy

07-04-2006, 06:30 AM

thats cool i just went and saw it sa ur opening sequence totaly looked like your style i noticed the bouey too not a big shot though the sun shot you did looked just like your dispersion style a lot kinda sucking it self back in bamph style from xmen 2 how much ab was usesd in your shots?

adityaprabhu

07-04-2006, 06:20 PM

Wow! Allan McKay! im a great fan of your work! :thumbsup:

My question here is related to PFlow, sorry for interrupting but i dont know where else to post...:shrug:

Ok, I have a PFlow animation, about 100,000 particles, affected by wind and gravity, similar to dust and sand.. I want to setup Motion Blur (object Mblur) and render with Mental Ray.

Can anyone suggest some good ways to do this, also suggest other ways to use Object Motion Blur with Particle flow.
I tried using it with Mental Ray but it slows down the render by ages. And also re-calculates as many times as there are events in the flow! thats like ages man!:eek:

:) Thanks!

OlegB

07-04-2006, 07:08 PM

Image Motion Blur is much more efficient than Object Motion Blur with PFlow particles. Why can't you use IMB?

Thanks,
Oleg B.

adityaprabhu

07-05-2006, 03:51 AM

Oh..is it as good looking as OMblur? Then i think i will use Img mblur... not with max rite now so cant check the difference. thanks!
Also, i wud like to add, which is the best renderer for particles? Mental Ray good enough?

PexElroy

07-05-2006, 05:30 AM

Allan - on the intro planet Krypton exploding, was that chunk blast done with PFlow and did they offer the model fractured, or did you pre-fracture it yourself, and if so, how did you do it for that detail level, was the "blast force" a central speed oper? Great insights on Superman Returns, a sure DVD own, thanks for sharing.

Question - is there a method, script or otherwise for PFlow to render and display (facet shaped) particles only in the view of the camera? So say instead of having all 250,000 particles visible, or considered, the opt/script/tool would only manage/display the amount which are in the camera’s field of view, and when it animates.

adityaprabhu

07-05-2006, 09:48 AM

Question - is there a method, script or otherwise for PFlow to render and display (facet shaped) particles only in the view of the camera? So say instead of having all 250,000 particles visible, or considered, the opt/script/tool would only manage/display the amount which are in the camera’s field of view, and when it animates.

Yes there is a way!:thumbsup: There is a plugin for free which will do just that, Its called Camera Culling by Orbaz Tech.
heres the link : http://www.orbaz.com/products/particle-flow-tools-freebies.html

PsychoSilence

07-05-2006, 01:48 PM

Allan - on the intro planet Krypton exploding, was that chunk blast done with PFlow and did they offer the model fractured, or did you pre-fracture it yourself, and if so, how did you do it for that detail level, was the "blast force" a central speed oper? Great insights on Superman Returns, a sure DVD own, thanks for sharing.

Question - is there a method, script or otherwise for PFlow to render and display (facet shaped) particles only in the view of the camera? So say instead of having all 250,000 particles visible, or considered, the opt/script/tool would only manage/display the amount which are in the camera’s field of view, and when it animates.

maybe a combination of camera culling and bobo´s technique shoud do the job.

regards

anselm

Steve Green

07-05-2006, 02:17 PM

Regarding motion blur, Image Motion Blur doesn't look as good as Object MBlur, especially if there's transparency involved, or you want to do long exposure tricks. Also IMB smudges highlights unless you use Brazil Mblur.

That said, IMB handles large number of particles better.

Of course, there's also multipass camera blur, but then you've got the extra render time.

There doesn't seem to be a perfect motion blur, you just have to weigh up what's important to you on a shot.

Cheers

Steve

amckay

07-06-2006, 03:17 AM

pexelroy - Thanks mate, the krypton destruction was a bit of a hack. nobody had really talked about it until the fragments that fly past camera and other stuff were all approved. And then I got thrown a task of having do the destruction of it but without changing the animation of the chunks that fly past amongst other things. which made it much more painful.

in the end the hero element of the rocks flying past camera is a seperate element made by Jeremy B. - and I handled the destruction of the planet etc. which had maybe 5 explosions in it. one was an uber fine particle pass of the planet tearing apart from behind all the way out to the front. using instanced pieces of krpytonite. Another couple of more finer passes, and then some bigger chunks. Ideally I didn't use any fragmenting for the piece, it was more lots and tiny pieces, and then projection mapping the planet matte painting over my initial geometry. And then I had some cool dust passes in there too.

so nothing fancy, just projection mapping lots of particles that explode out (instanced rocks)

Steve Green

07-06-2006, 09:00 AM

Hi Allan,

since Motion Blur has been discussed recently, what method do you tend to find works best, quality-wise?

I found that in Scanline, Object Motion Blur with a smidge of John Burnett's IMB render effect seemed to give the best results.

Mental Ray seems pretty good as well, although I've not tested it extensively, and I don't know how it handles lots of particles - or whether there's any other gotchas like not working with Afterburn.

Vray seems to have problems with Motion Blur and particles - I've seen reports that 1.5 should fix this.

Brazil has a better IMB than Max for handling bright highlights - but still has the same problems as normal IMB in exchange for speed.

I think that's all of them :)

Cheers

Steve

PexElroy

07-06-2006, 06:45 PM

Thanks for the help all, and Allan for that info! This Camera Culling opt is real handy. Now trying out BOBO's script.

loran

07-07-2006, 03:49 PM

ok peoples,
I just release a quick tutorial about my rocket smoke test I post earlier.
It s about my way of working with PF. and there is the downloadable scene.
http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/tutorials/images/fluidfakes_00b.jpg
enjoy
http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/

Daniel-B

07-07-2006, 07:53 PM

That looks great, loran. Thanks for the tutorial.

superhypersam

07-07-2006, 09:30 PM

Loran
Nice tutorail, the AB shader is great!
Though the point render tutorial would only play about 20 seconds and stop

Allan Mckay

so after playing with flood whats your opinion on all the fluid systems out thier,
which pony are u backing. any other opinions welcome.

Scanline definetly has the nicest looking results so far (imho) but I have no idea about useabilty.

lol the stuffi seen from scanline looked sweet ass. and flood i wonder if thats ever gunna get to the plubic or not and aura is still beta from what i know and fume i just found out about that a few weeks ago. but when people are talking fluids i think like water type stuff that glue realflow, the scanline thing and flood can do from what i understand mayas fluids dont do water and neither does aura...

SoLiTuDe

07-08-2006, 06:29 AM

lol the stuffi seen from scanline looked sweet ass. and flood i wonder if thats ever gunna get to the plubic or not and aura is still beta from what i know and fume i just found out about that a few weeks ago. but when people are talking fluids i think like water type stuff that glue realflow, the scanline thing and flood can do from what i understand mayas fluids dont do water and neither does aura...

Yeah it's kinda funky how they name things like fire and such fluids... but it makes sense simply because of the dynamics simulations they actually use. Maya Unlimited DOES have ocean/pond but it's not the same as it's other "fluid effects" also, it CAN actually simulate water and such, but it really seems not setup for that (everything in maya is a custom setup!). Aura just uses the fluid dynamics as it's base for the fire and such sims... Scanline seems to have it all though which is mad cool! I wonder if flood can be setup for doing fire sims??? And yeah... will it ever be public!? Can't wait to see what Fume is all about though even if it doesn't do water, and it does fire I still can't wait! I wish it wasn't so much on the down low...

DeKo-LT

07-08-2006, 09:58 AM

Can somebody post link to watch fume?
Thanks! :thumbsup:

Steve Green

07-08-2006, 10:10 AM

I don't think there's any information out there other than it exists, and anyone using it won't be able to give information because of NDAs.

I would imagine there's likely to be an announcement at Siggraph within the month, if any more information is released.

Cheers,

Steve

feldy

07-08-2006, 05:18 PM

i finaly moved to la in febuary only to find out they moved siggy to boston this year sucks got to go to e3 though as a devloper that was sweet BOOTBABES!!!

Nazgul

07-10-2006, 02:02 PM

Rif(TPWorld forum) has put up a replacing new forum called www.cgfluids.com (http://www.cgfluids.com)

Here's what he said in one of his post:
*****

"So for those of you that will be around Boston this August , Cebas Team Will be their and will be showing in person the TP2.5 new features and updates ..

plus this year , a HUGE surprise is Coming .. Ill be showing another Product that is Not done from Cebas that i will be hosting the Support forum as well on release.. for now i cannot say more than its another brilliant thing that hook up nicely to tp and do Hyper supper dooper cool effects"

*****

Hmmm let me think. You close a website about Thinking Particles and open a new one about Thinking Particles and another software plug-in which URL is cgfluids.com....what could this announcement be???!!

loran

07-10-2006, 02:14 PM

Without no news from AURA from years now... It could be a fluid system working with TP... mmmm I can t wait

Steve Green

07-10-2006, 03:29 PM

Looks it's going to be like buses, wait ages for one then three come along at once.

- Steve

AdrianWilliams

07-10-2006, 11:19 PM

Fume?? never heard of that one? got any links and more info?

feldy

07-11-2006, 03:40 AM

no unfourntly

Steve Green

07-11-2006, 07:23 AM

I don't think there is any more info, I've seen it mentioned once here and once on the orbaz forums. No examples or what its capabilities are though.

I expect there'd be some info at Siggraph.

- Steve

feldy

07-11-2006, 07:42 AM

u would wouldnt you we havent herd of aura for a while though either

loran

07-11-2006, 08:52 AM

watch this, a cool meteorite impact...looks to be done with AfterBurn. I can't find info on who do this
http://www.snptv.org/data/vutv/668.jpg
blablabla (http://www.snptv.org/decouverte/read_vutv.php?id_vutv=668)

video (http://www.beam.tv/beamreels/reel_player.php?pCPwzxcGdM)

PsychoSilence

07-11-2006, 10:10 AM

yeah loran, watched this spot allready somewhere...very neat impact indeed! damn, i wish i would have the time to do such funky sh*t :(

rdg

07-11-2006, 01:14 PM

Hi there!

I am trying to visualize a Leica HDS Scan with Pflow.
I have a textfile and want to read the positions of particles in the birth script operator:

pCont.particlePosition = [temp[1] as float,temp[2] as float,temp[3] as float]

)
)
)

altogether there are 1500590 samples/particles.
I aproximate to this number by skipping samples, this is done by a python script.

Sometimes it looks like PFlow is saturated and no particels are added, or some (~66%) of them are missing.

So I ask myself and you:
Is this the right position and method to place particles in a PFlow system?

2nd question:
Is it possible to render PFlow as facing planes/triangles without attaching external geometry?

thank you in advance!

Georg

loran

07-11-2006, 01:48 PM

I have to produce a big explosion with afterburn... ANd that suck! it s impossible to have a real control on particles size! I can t understand how it manage this. The pflow afterburn operator option (scale and rotation) doesnt works ! I want to create some big smoke spikes. when it reach a distance it stop and the smoke trail fade out. how can keep the top of the spike small and the base big?? no way with animated scale too, the top alway grow big. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArrr I don t like the strange after burn controls
My dream is a volumetric material so we can manage with PF and traditionnal materials

rdg

07-11-2006, 02:28 PM

I managed to create 100000 particels by reading them from the textfile.
But if I scrub the timeline they disappear.
They do not render after scrubbing or changing display/shape parameters.

Maybe someone can help me or point me to the right direction ...

Georg

rdg

07-11-2006, 03:12 PM

Ok.
I found Allan McKay's fracture tutorial and everything is now working fine.
'Shape Facing' is the operator I was searching for.

The main failure in my script was that in some cases there were more particles created than the text file has entries. After fixing that I can scrub and render ...

http://proforma.preset.de/ALO/working_450.jpg

Georg

PsychoSilence

07-11-2006, 03:45 PM

nice job!

So the textfile states the positions of every particle in the scene? very interesting approach of positioning objects!

those *.ptx files are generated by a Leica HDS Laser Scanner. The native fileformat seems to be *.pts.

it looks like this:

[header]
x y z unknown r g b

The image I posted is just a sample dataset to check things out.
Our sponsor is supporting us with scanning the scene, but offers no triangulated data :(
I don't have the time to implement the delaunay triangulation right now.
The mass of sample points and complexity of the geometry and maxScript ?
And no PolyWorks within reach.

I tried placing a boxes at each sample.
So the idea was to use PFlow, as it could/should handle the sample data more effictively.
My computer stops rendering at about 120000 and crashes at about 180000 samples.
Maybe the production computers can handle the data.

But even this 100000 samples are enough to get a shape of the location and previzualise the performance taking place. It is a different 'look'.

Tomorrow the actual scanning will happen.

Georg

g8ff

07-11-2006, 05:32 PM

-Loran

You can control the size of the AB particles within the AB shader dialog. You can choose to base it on particle age, which sounds like what you are looking for. So add a delete op to the pflow, then enable the AFC curve for the Sph radius within the afterburn manager. Set the Low value fairly low, and the high to whatever size you are trying to achieve. Also, adjust the velocity of the AFC curve to ramp up the size change. Should do the trick.

-Geoff

superhypersam

07-11-2006, 07:13 PM

In regards to Fume,

so far no infomation has bin publicly relesed, I know some studios are using it for RnD and at
this point maybe even production. looked alot like Aura, i only saw fire and smoke,looked very cool. Though it seems to me if u can create curling dynamic fire, then u can probly use it to make fluids, maybe not large bodies, but at least pouring flowing water.

Cant wait to get my grubby mits on it, or aura scanline,flood, something.

Loran.

are u trying to create an explosion like the image/video u posted?

If so try using 1 particle to define the distance and speed of the "smoke spike" then use spawn by travel distance too create a line of parts behind it.

Apply AB to only the spawned parts.

then in the AB dialog.... this is easier look at attached file, threw it together in 2 mins, but should illustrate the method

www.giantapestudios.com/pflow/explode.max

hope that helps

Neejoh

07-11-2006, 08:39 PM

Guys, somehow I've lost my shortcut "6" for the PFlow dialog and I can't seem to find it in the customize user interface.... I know I can open the window via the button on the source node but let's think about workflow ;) Does anyone has any idea on how to repair this little baby?

loran

07-12-2006, 07:39 AM

g8ff-
thx, this is what I ve done :/

superhypersam-
THX!! your file works fine! This what I tried to achieve but with particle age instead of emitter distance. thx a lot this is so nice.
Yes I want to replicate this kind of explosion seen in the commercial I post previously. This is an amazing task for a museum customer: recreate the powder tower explosion of the Nantes castel (http://images.google.fr/images?q=Chateau+des+Ducs+de+Bretagne&ndsp=20&svnum=10&hl=fr&lr=&start=0&sa=N) in HDV! of course there is nearly no budget for this but I de like to create a cool CG explosion

BigRanS123

07-12-2006, 02:45 PM

Hey guys, long time no see. I had a quick question that im sure has been addressed in here previously but I don't have a lot of time to scrub threw the posts. Im needing to have particles distribute on the surface of an object, but I also need them to face out based on the face normals of the distribution object. Like if I was to make a cactus or something like that, and I needed the needles to poke out from all over the surface. I have looked at the distribution methods, and the best I can get is random 3d, witch is no good for what I need. I can get what Im looking for when I use Max's hair plugin, but the UVW's get all f'd up and I can not for the life of me figure out why thats happening, also I would like to use the group feature in Pflow this way I can scatter more than just one item at a time. Im sure that this is and option, I just need someone to show me the way.

Thanks you guys,

r.

monkeydonut

07-12-2006, 04:38 PM

You can do this using speed by surface (with velocity=0), and orient to speed space.

kaktuz

07-13-2006, 07:19 PM

Hi all! :)
Very intresting thread, trying to read all pages, lost myself on 150 page:)
Got small question
Here test render of my scene.
video (http://s48.photobucket.com/albums/f224/kaktuz/?action=view&current=manfire.flv)
I have sequence of running fireman, and i have sequence of running simple man,
i want to make fire appear gradually on simple man.
I made fractal mask from running man alpha.
And now how can i apply this mask in after fx ?

Hope you understand question:)

BigRanS123

07-13-2006, 08:01 PM

Thank you monkeydonut it worked fine. Just haveing some smaller issues now. Biggest problem now is haveing the time to look at it.

Thanks,

R.

Laserschwert

07-14-2006, 03:05 PM

I have already posted this question at Orbaz' forums, but I'll try my luck here as well:

I have to simulate a large area covered with plants and grass, and I am trying to use ParticleFlow for this. Especially keeping the polygon count as reasonable as possible causes a headache, and I guess except for using the CameraCulling operator there's not much I can do without scripting (since I don't have any of the "Tool Boxes").

So, as the title might suggest I am trying to reduce the particle count with the distance from the camera. I have already tried wiring the position of a UVW-gizmo to the camera, projecting a radial gradient onto the ground geometry, and using this gradient as a "Density by Material"-map in the position operator. Unfortunately the position of all the particles (basically the "seed") changes every time the gradient's position is updated (which in case of a moving camera is every frame).

Another idea would be to animate the particle scale, depending on the camera distance, but this can't happen in a linear way, for example when I want the particle size to be constant from distance 0 till 200, and want them to change size from 100% down to 0% between distance 200 and 300.

Looking at modern games, grass-geometry (in my case single-polygon planes with appropriate textures and opacity maps) fades out in the distance, which would be my favourite way of doing this (since there's no "popping" happening). If the visibility of a particle reaches 0%, it gets deleted... BUT, when I decrease the distance again, it should get visible again, in the same place as before (but I guess this is the way a "random seed" works anyway).

So, long post, but I hope there's a way to script any of this.

DeKo-LT

07-17-2006, 06:54 AM

from Orbaz Technologies this morning:
"The demo version of Particle Flow Tools: Box#3 is available for download - http://www.orbaz.com/download/

Demo Limitations
================
This product is a limited demo/evaluation version, and as such, it does not contain a number of things that the full, commercial application has including:
- You can create your own particle systems, data operators and modify the example scenes. You can verify the animation in viewports but the functionality of the operators is limited at render time.
- Evaluation version restricts the ability to save the projects - commercial version cannot load files from evaluation version.
- Caching is limited - demo version cannot write cache data files.
- It is for evaluation purposes only and cannot be used in commercial projects."

Finally... :thumbsup:

PsychoSilence

07-17-2006, 08:37 AM

Hey DeKoVV,

those are reaslly good news! I will test it tonite, if i can find the time.

Hopefully after my next assignment i´ll be able to purchase the new toolbox :) right now i´m broke :D

rdg

07-19-2006, 11:28 AM

here are some preview samples of the particleCloud to pFlow task:

http://www.preset.de/fotos/playWithLeicaScanner/

this are roughly 10% of the 140.000.000 Samples into 3dsmax.
After this more technical phase, I hope I can spend some playing with this setup.

ehh worked for me... got ur new dvd allan pretty sweet from what ive seen of it. havnt had a chance to use it for anything yet though i just thought id grab it since it was comming from the man. hey man also whats with flood we ever gunna see a comerical version of it or what?

rdg

07-25-2006, 08:54 AM

In the meantime I found some more interestig samples in the pointcloud:

http://www.preset.de/negativerRaum/proposal/_gfx/persp-05.jpg

http://www.preset.de/negativerRaum/proposal/_gfx/4-p-3.jpg

For me the 'scan shadows' are the most intersting part of the point cloud, as the scanner is cartographing some thing like the 'negative space'.
I am playing now with temporal setups to create or destroy this 'confectioner-esk' architectures. But encountering some basic lack of knowlege how to design the particle flow :)
So I have to dig some more tutorials and get back if you are intersted in my progress ...

Georg

Nazgul

07-27-2006, 03:05 PM

Hiya!

I have a pFlow system on which I added blobmesh to.
Now everything is nice but the director got in asking for my blobs to be "oblong", stretched...
That way my cartoon smoke looks more irregular, more organic. Sound liek a good idea but when I tried changing the scale of my pFlow particles, it wasn't affecting the blobmesh accordingly.
Anyone has a suggestion or idea I could try to fix that?
Thank you.

Nazgul

07-27-2006, 03:27 PM

Never mind... my collegue found a solution using a shape instance node and picking a sphere.
Then in my scale node I adjusted the XYZ sizes I wanted and blobmeshed everything. Voila!
Works fine.

Thanks

superhypersam

07-27-2006, 06:34 PM

Hey Nazgul,

I have played with this idea my self and never got satisfactory result.

any chance of posting an example file.

thx

Nazgul

07-28-2006, 12:37 PM

I'll see what I can do. I can't post anything from my workplace.
Stay tuned!

DeKo-LT

08-01-2006, 04:08 PM

FumeFX from Afterworks:
http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFx.asp

jussing

08-01-2006, 06:06 PM

FumeFX from Afterworks:
http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFx.asp

Wauw. When I watch something like this:

http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFX/animations/burning%20torus.avi

I go through three phases...

I'm awed at what can be achieved with computer graphics.
I curse those who made it for making it before I did something like that, and I swear I'll stop working on something like that right away.
I think to myself.... it's gotta be possible to cook something like that up without plugins... and there I go again, back to square one. :rolleyes:
- Jonas

Neejoh

08-01-2006, 06:06 PM

FumeFX from Afterworks:
http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFx.aspmy god, you just made me wet my pants :+ That box with the letters + smoke in it looks so good, thanks for the link! I hope they'll up some more examples soon

amckay

08-02-2006, 04:23 AM

fume = hey they finally anounced it!

feldy, flood = I can't say, guess you'll have to wait! d'oh!

PsychoSilence

08-02-2006, 09:30 AM

FumeFX from Afterworks:
http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFx.asp

is there a price known? ißd like to purchase it right away...if my boss set´s free the budget :(

feldy

08-03-2006, 03:57 AM

allan u have any comments on fume compared to aura and do u think that fume is gunna replace ab

DeKo-LT

08-03-2006, 08:58 PM

hey guys,
somebody have buyed Advanced Visual Effects 2 (http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/309665) by Allan?
It is worth?
And whats about ParticleFX for Film (http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/271409) by Szymon Masiak?
Thanks for advice :thumbsup:

feldy

08-03-2006, 09:01 PM

yes i have bought every dvd allan put out verygood stuff the one from simon i have not bought but i do hear its pretty good too

Nazgul

08-09-2006, 12:37 PM

What is the way to have different hues of a same color on my particles?
I don't have to create 3 different particle systems for that, do I?
thanks

oatz

08-09-2006, 02:33 PM

What is the way to have different hues of a same color on my particles?
I don't have to create 3 different particle systems for that, do I?
thanks
Create a multi/sub material with your hues, then put a material frequency or material dynamic operator in your pflow.

Nazgul

08-09-2006, 02:56 PM

Excellent! Thanks Oatz.

amckay

08-17-2006, 01:01 AM

In regards to the fume vs aura vs ab stuff - Fume won't replace AB per say, I've been using fume for years and yes it's going to be a big step in max fx evolution, but fluids are still just for specifc stuff, as with Maya fluids by no extreem have replaced maya particles etc. So pending on what is necessary fluids can sometimes be a suitable and pleasant option, othertimes max particles and vice versa. And of course using them together, to run particles through fluid vectors.

Aura too is a great product, and so are most of the other fluids apps in development right now. Fluids and particles are still quite different beasts, AB's still a useful product, but obviously there were always things that were too ambitious for it as it's a fairly old product now, and essentially is just a standard raymarcher shader.

BrandonD

08-17-2006, 01:43 AM

Well said. There'll always be a need for simple volumetric primitives.

pichoo

08-17-2006, 02:16 AM

Also often times maya users try to hack their fluid dynamics to act as a standard raymarcher eg; to get volumetric shader for the particles.

Daniel-B

08-17-2006, 06:08 AM

And of course using them together, to run particles through fluid vectors.

From what I understand, that is what ILM did for the nuclear explosions in Terminator 3. Do you think this will be possible to do with Fume when it's released? In T3, ILM ran 2D fluid simulations to create a 3D sim after being interpolated in 3D space, and then ran particles through the fluid vectors. I would very much like to do this on a film I am working on.

SoLiTuDe

08-17-2006, 06:19 AM

in maya that's doable -- ie doing a basic fluid sim and running expressions/scripts to send out that data to control other particles. I think there is a dvd out for that exact effect actually ... i think digital tutors made it... anywho i'm sure there will be the option for it somehow. It'd be smart to say the least for them to integrate afterburn with fumefx even if it's just on the level of afterburn being able to pick fumefx particles as it's source.

Daniel-B

08-17-2006, 07:42 AM

in maya that's doable -- ie doing a basic fluid sim and running expressions/scripts to send out that data to control other particles. I think there is a dvd out for that exact effect actually ... i think digital tutors made it... anywho i'm sure there will be the option for it somehow. It'd be smart to say the least for them to integrate afterburn with fumefx even if it's just on the level of afterburn being able to pick fumefx particles as it's source.

Yeah, I've done it in Maya. I've even got the particles running through the fluid, but I have no way to render volumetic puffs on the particles to get the smoky mushroom cloud look.

SoLiTuDe

08-17-2006, 07:57 AM

even though this isn't a maya forum... :D you can use a fluid shader/node/contatiner whatever connected to the particle cloud shader with particlesamplerinfo nodes and whatnot... i dunno -- it's been a while, but it's possible. --check out a thing called overburn i think not quite afterburn, but it's basically presets of explosions and stuff with all that linked already :)

Daniel-B

08-17-2006, 09:20 AM

even though this isn't a maya forum... :D you can use a fluid shader/node/contatiner whatever connected to the particle cloud shader with particlesamplerinfo nodes and whatnot... i dunno -- it's been a while, but it's possible. --check out a thing called overburn i think not quite afterburn, but it's basically presets of explosions and stuff with all that linked already :)

Yeah, I downloaded it, but I couldn't figure out how to use it at all.

depleteD

08-19-2006, 10:19 PM

damn, pflow box 3 hey.
damn.
this shit is complicated.
Well im gonna try and be on the forums now do some messed up stuff with it. I think i see a lot of potential but a lot of reading.

Hi again everyone.

-Andrew

amckay

08-21-2006, 09:58 PM

bs3's great just for the pflow particle disk caching, Oleg and i used that heavily on superman returns for a lot of the heavier particle effects, as I'm sure max would have died without that feature. All in all it's just great for when particle effects are appoved you can cache them and use them in a viewport without worry of calculation times or pre-rolling.

However disk caching is a small feature compared to how open bs3's sub operators are, however than can be a bit of a brain **** to get into if you're new to it all.

SandeepMaithani

08-22-2006, 11:56 AM

Hi All
I'm trying to sinulate a plane crash in desert and this is where i've reached so far..i'm still trying on that but any comment or guidance is highly appreciated....its kinda urgent.....i'm looking for a refernce too....file attached

Regards

Sandy

jussing

08-22-2006, 12:11 PM

Scanline did the most awesome desert plane crash with thinking particles:
http://www.scanline.de/_r_d/checkintodesaster/Check_in.htm

They used to have the clips for download, including particle passes, but they took them down. :(

Cheers,
- Jonas

loran

08-22-2006, 01:07 PM

sandy-maith,
Do you use afterburn?
A plane crash in the sand might look like an explosion... huge mass hitting sand will blow the sand in big dense smoke.

This is more of a landing first and then crashing....so the plane actually is dropping from a relatively low height....
I'm working on these lines..

Initial impact will raise big streaks of sand to a good amount of height and then as the plane drags on the sand, it will blow up some sand with that....
The worst thing is ..i've got 12 hours to do this ....so left with no time for experiments...I might pull up the effect but texturing is a killer to me....any further help!!

regards

sandy

loran

08-22-2006, 01:28 PM

what kind of plane is it?
BIg boeing or small propeller?
DO YOU USE AFTER BURN?

SandeepMaithani

08-22-2006, 03:00 PM

what kind of plane is it?---its a boeing 747

DO YOU USE AFTER BURN?--i have afterburn but relatively new to it...so kinda sticking with PF as of now...is it quickly acheivable with AB??
Regards

Sandy

loran

08-22-2006, 03:08 PM

ok
here is a crash I do for you man ( without afterburn, no plugs)
http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/divers/cgtalk/crash.jpg (http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/divers/cgtalk/crash01.avi)

thank you to distrub me at work! 1hour 1/2 spended to that fun things :))

SandeepMaithani

08-22-2006, 03:45 PM

I'm speechless...thanks a lot for all the efforts buddy ..i'll surely try to build up on that...will post the results soon

regards

sandy

Strob

08-23-2006, 07:14 PM

Hi!

I'm trying to make a spaceship booster flame.

I created a nice simple system with pflow where a cone is the position object with some particles stuck on it. those first particles spawn other particles that are pushed by a wind with turbulence. So I get a pretty nice flame by bluring the particles and a material dynamic changing the color by the age.

But now I want to parent this system to the booster which is animated, but when my particle system is moving very fast the particles change their motion a lot and the nice flame become a big diffused inform cloud...

Does anyone know how I could parent the system and keep the animation as it is when not moving?

I tried to cached the particles, but the result is the same... I wonder why the system change the result of the cached particles when moving...

Strob

08-23-2006, 07:30 PM

Ok sorry I found the solution,

That was the divergence causing this. When the flame is not moving, the divergence had almost not influence at 20. But when moving, I have to put it at zero and my flame seems back to normal.

cpaulson

08-23-2006, 10:08 PM

hello all, i'm trying to create an effect where some dust is emitting of the surface of other particles using particle flow. my problem is that my spawned particles are being emitted at the center of some instanced geomatry particles rather than on their surface. I don't think i can use a position object node to get the effect i want because you can't select each individual particle this way. is there some way to achieve this? or is it possible to turn my parent particles and their motion into seperate objects from the particle system? if i could seperate them then i could just use the position object option to create the effect. any ideas would be super helpful.

thanks

superhypersam

08-23-2006, 10:18 PM

Hello,

try using a mesher and then emit the dust from that.

cheers

cpaulson

08-23-2006, 10:41 PM

sweet thanks. exactly what i needed.

cpaulson

08-23-2006, 11:17 PM

hehe after playing with mesher for a bit i find that i am unable to select mesher in the position object node is this not possible or is there something that i'm missing?

Hi Once again
Finally client didnt like what i sent to him....so lost it...
and thanks loran once again for the help...i did see scanline.de plane crash and its just great...they used cebas they mentioned....
I'm trying to work on those lines and just thinking if someone wants to join in....and advice..

thats how i'm starting to build this plane crash in desert...see the attached file...